Whenever the verb ‘suan’ expresses equivalency between subject and object, it can be followed by ‘shi’. This paper aims to show: 1. Strict equivalent objects connected by ‘shi’ cannot be substituted by ‘suan(shi)’. 2. When expressing categorization, the major semantic feature of ‘shi’ is to put the subject to the center or almost center of the domain of the object, whereas ‘suan(shi)’ puts the former to the boundary of the latter. 3. The rules above extend to the metaphoric uses of ‘shi’ and ‘suan(shi)’. The difference between semantic features determines their respective syntactic properties. We conclude that ‘suan(shi)’ should be categorized as a quasi-copula
Whenever the verb ‘suan’ expresses equivalency between subject and object, it can be followed by ‘shi’. This paper aims to show: 1. Strict equivalent objects connected by ‘shi’ cannot be substituted by ‘suan(shi)’. 2. When expressing categorization, the major semantic feature of ‘shi’ is to put the subject to the center or almost center of the domain of the object, whereas ‘suan(shi)’ puts the former to the boundary of the latter. 3. The rules above extend to the metaphoric uses of ‘shi’ and ‘suan(shi)’. The difference between semantic features determines their respective syntactic properties. We conclude that ‘suan(shi)’ should be categorized as a quasi-copula
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